


To Fly True

by 222Ravens



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Feels, First Meeting, Gen, Mentorship, Rey character study, a lot of introspective dialogue???, like five seconds or less post-TFA, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5809852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/222Ravens/pseuds/222Ravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What did you ask for? In those quiet moments, when you felt hopeless, or afraid. Everyone asks for something.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Fly True

Rey isn't sure what she expected, perhaps, but this man isn't quite it. And yet, _is,_ strangely so, all at once.

 

Part of her thinks to wonder if she wasn’t making a mistake, if she isn’t making this dramatic gesture to a poor confused fisherman, but no, _no._ There’s no mistake.

 

Her hand trembles, the wind carrying salt, and wet, and else that is foreign to her nose, until recently.

 

If he looked older than she somehow expected, he was also younger, somehow. If he was tired, there was something of fierceness there, too. Quiet danger. Not in a way that put her in any, she felt, but there nonetheless.

 

More than that, there was a rightness to him. To all of this, somehow, this island that had haunted her. All of the memories and dreams and half-known-things that had pulled her here, centred upon this man, standing in front of her. Not righteous, mind. But _right_. In the sense of flying true. Of looking at an engine or a bit of scrap, and knowing all the pieces still were sound, if she just put in the work to bring them back into alignment...

 

Here was a legend, here was a hero, and somehow she thought she would feel small, standing in front of him. Small, because for so many years, she had been, in the scheme of things. But she looks in his eyes, as he slowly takes steps toward her, until they are nearly face to face. There’s a glimmer of respect there. _Awe_ , even, that she’s here. It’s not for reasons she understands, not wholly yet, but it’s there, and it feels like proof, maybe. Just perhaps. That she wasn't small, not anymore, and she never had been, not really. That nobody was.

 

That, instead, there was potential in her veins, bright with the weight of everything. Balanced on this same point that she'd felt before, in that fight with Kylo Ren, the moment of serenity between action and inaction upon which every possibility hinged.

 

When he speaks, there is something almost wry in his voice, as he shakes his head. "That isn't mine."

 

She wasn't sure, either, what she had expected him to say, but this wasn't it. Somehow, immediately, she wants to argue. “It was, once."

 

"Once? Perhaps. And someone else's before that. But you don't have to give it to me." There's something in his voice that has an effect on her. Not the same way _that_ voice and a mind had pressed at her before,. Nothing like that.But there's a weight to it, a tangibility. One she thinks he isn't even fully aware of, this long disused.

 

She has to remind herself to shake off, to stand.'It's yours.' 

 

'I haven't held it in a long time.' His right hand twitches, a ghost of movement. 'A long time.'

 

'Perhaps it’s time to, then.’ She says, and knows they are not speaking of the weapon. Couching ideas in the concrete. She thinks he understands her meaning, _knows_ that, with something unfamiliar in its very familiarity. The same way he seems to _know_ her, just by looking.

 

'No, it isn't. It's not my time anymore.'

 

She wants to be angry, that he could even say that. To let that kind of hopelessness win. All of that risk, everything that happened to her and to everyone else, just to find him. Everything pulling her here, shaping her choices without her say, and he wants to tell her she’s wasted her time? That’s not _acceptable_. 

 

“I’ve dreamed of this place.’ Is all she can say, on that high point, sky and rock and water all around. “Even before I knew you were real, when all I saw with my own eyes was sand… I could see it.”

 

She isn’t sure why she’s telling him that, but she’s desperate to make the connection, catch him before this slips through her fingers.Before she loses this, too.

 

Try again, reaching out, proffering. “The Galaxy needs you.' It’s all she can do.

 

 

Another shake of the head. “What it needs is hope. I don’t think _I’m_ one to give it that, now.”

 

 

She isn’t sure he’s right. Not the way the stories told of it, the ones she’d heard. If anyone could, it had to be him. But he doesn’t seem to believe it, and perhaps that’s enough to make it true, after a fashion. Perhaps the only reason she thinks otherwise because she _does_ believe, or she wants to. 

 

“Who, then? You’re _Luke Skywalker_.” She lets the name breathe out on her lips, carrying the weight she knows that he has. “You’re the _last Jedi_ in the galaxy.”

 

“Maybe I am, for now. That doesn’t mean I can fix it. I wish it did. There was a time I thought I could, but…”

 

'Your _sister_ needs you, then.’ She tries, changing tack, because _hope_ is a fragile thing, but that kind of need? Territory well trod. “She’s lost enough.”

 

Something of what tired strength there was in the man crumples, though he scarcely moves. “So I was right.

 

When I saw the Falcon entering atmosphere, just for a moment I thought… But, no. I felt it, all of it. Leia, and Han, and… I wasn’t there to stop it, I was too much of a …” His strength returns, in a way that feels channeled by pain. “Tell me, was it...'

 

“His son killed him. I saw it. Han… Was trying to save him, I think. For a moment I thought it might even work, we all did. Foolish.”

 

She sees that moment again, feels it. That desperation, before the light disappeared, and what came after. It's effort to focus back on the present.

 

“No. It wasn’t foolish. It didn’t succeed, perhaps, but compassion is never foolish.”

 

“It might be, here. Because I... I tried. Compassion. To see as he did. I felt his mind, when he was trying to see mine." She's back in the chair again, helpless. "He was scared and… So bitter. Grasping. He wants power and doesn’t have enough. So he hates himself so much that he has to hate everything else. I don’t know there’s any reaching that. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

 

There's another silence, a weightier one. “Another of my mistakes. I should have…”

 

“Shoulds are useless.” She interjects, and shrugs. “What? They are. Lots of things should. They _didn’t_. If his father couldn't save him, don’t see what you could have done. But for what it’s worth… I’m sorry. Han seemed like a good man, in his own way. I would have liked to know him longer.”

 

“ _In his own way._ It always was that, with him.”

 

Silence, the kind of grief that is lessened by being shared, a weight carried by two. Another thing she isn’t used to, and then… He’s gathering himself, again, pulling himself up from that moment of heart-deep loss.

 

Then… That look, the one that keeps measuring her. It’s a calm scrutiny, one that doesn’t bother her exactly, so much as make her want to know what he’s looking for.There’s a decision he’s just made, for better or worse, another shifting of the balances. She just doesn’t know what it is, yet. 

 

She shivers, and for once, it’s not from that gaze, so much as the wind. It’s a different kind of cold than the desert. Less biting, but the damp feels… Creeping, like it wants to crawl inside and settle in her hollowed bones, the way she made a home out of that old AT-AT, back on Jakku.

 

“You’re cold.” He observes, as if that was all he’d seen in that glance, but that’s not quite true.

 

“I’m alright.” She protests, and he raises an eyebrow, then makes a hand gesture for her to follow.

 

She does, for lack of anything else, and they walk through the ruins of whatever this was. Their feet on the stones. Then soft, on the soil, and plants, so many of those, though small, the rich green of it still almost _too much._

 

Then, ducking into a structure, one more well maintained than the others. The one she must have spotted the smoke plume from, as she’d descended. It’s small. Sparse, even by her standards. Hardly any things in it. Still, there’s food bubbling on a small earthen stove, enough of a fire that it’s a little warmer, even with the door flap raised. He frowns at it.

 

“You don’t have to share.” She says, reflexively. It’s true. She ate today, an entire half portion, just as _breakfast_.

 

He looks at her. “Are you hungry?”

 

It’s an odd question. She’s spent so long being hungry that the idea of it _being_ a question at all is foreign.. So many nights of the pinch, the ache of it, and only the past few weeks has she had to adjust to a new sort of normalcy, in that. To even think in terms of ‘breakfast’ even, was odd, of there being enough regular meals you had different names for them. She knew the words, but between knowing and _using?_

 

Her body isn’t sure how to answer the question, whether it’s a yes, because _always_ , or a no, because… So she just stares, until he shrugs again.

 

“There’s not much, I’m afraid, is all.” He says, tipping the pot so she can see, and she almost chokes on thin air. It looks like fish, mostly, tubers and bits of something. But still. Even after the good rations of the trip to think of, that’s… More food than she ate in three days, sometimes. A week, once, when her luck ran bad and she’d hurt herself, and she’d stretched a portion out for _days._ It had only been luck that she’d had the strength to find anything the day she’d finally managed to drag herself back into work. Luck and sheer determination.

 

But it’s _food_ , and it’s being offered, and wherever the rest of the conversation goes, she isn’t sure there’s a price, here. She feels almost selfish, taking the food, when she doesn’t wholly need it. Yet, still, it has to be a good sign. That’s trust, right there. Respect. A sign a good trade is being done.

 

So when the bowl is held out, she takes the staff off her back, and leans it against the doorframe, and takes it. When she sits on the floor, she thinks to put the lightsaber down, for a moment, too. Instead, she lets it rest on her lap, as they both sit, and eat, and try not to let the silence weigh too heavy.

 

A few bites in, she can’t help herself. “What am I here to find, then? Why send someone here?”

 

He sighs. ‘I didn’t… Not someone. Not _anyone_ , at least.'

 

"Why leave a map, then? Why _ask_  to be found?"

 

"I didn't want to be forgotten. Is that a terrible thing?"

 

" _No_. It isn’t. “

 

The vehemence of that seems to surprise him, a little, or maybe it doesn’t. Not the way it surprised her, seeing this island from the window of the Falcon. That deja vu of something she never knew to be real. If it does, or doesn’t, he says nothing about it.

 

“That doesn’t answer my question, though. You can leave memories without a way to be found. Someone doesn't want to be found, there’s no map, no trail. Nothing to look for. Trust me, I know something about that.”

 

He gives her an odd look. "You would, wouldn't you?"

 

She wants to ask, but it isn't what's important, not the most. As long she’s waited for her family, everyone else has been waiting for _this_ , instead. “It doesn’t matter why I found you. Maybe it was… The Force, maybe luck, I don’t really care. I know I came here for a reason. I haven’t worked it out yet, not fully. But there is one. I’d thought…” Her jaw works, helplessly.

 

“I’d thought I’d just show up, give you the lightsaber, and that would be that. I’d be done, I’d fade out of the story, and you’d do whatever needed doing. But…”

 

“But life is rarely that simple, is it?” A metal spoon scrapes across the bowl. 

 

Her own bowl is on the ground beside her, dropping with a clatter, her hands free to speak. “So that’s it then? You won’t help me. You won’t help any of us? Fine then.” She makes to stand. Doesn't.

 

Pause, as they both gauge the other's intent. "What's fine about it?"

 

"What fine about not having help? Nothing. I've just rarely had the luxury of any other option. I shouldn't have gotten attached to the idea of it, apparently." She know she is showing her hurt so plainly, but she can't bring herself to care.

 

That kind fierceness is back, wholly this time. “I _never said that_. I never said I wouldn't help. Just that... That it wasn’t mine, not anymore. It’s yours, now. At least, I think it could be. All of it. If you want it. If you think you can use it well.“

 

It isn’t a surprise, which itself is a surprise. And hearing him say that still makes the breath catch in her throat, even so. Part of her feels wondrous, the other part still afraid, still _small_ , despite everything she wants to tell herself different. “What if I do wrong? I didn't ask for this.”

 

“Neither did I. In fact, as experience tells me… If you had asked, you probably wouldn't have been right for it."

 

“Why did you come here?” She doesn’t know how to answer half the questions he keeps asking, especially not the questions he’s asking without ever posing one. 

So she asks one, herself. “Why stay away for so long?”

 

“I was… Looking for something. Waiting for it.”

 

“Did you find it?”

 

The comm on her belt shifts as she does. She wonders if she should have let Chewie and Artoo know what she’s found, _who_ she has found. By rights, yes. They knew him once, after all Perhaps they could have talked sense into him, or dragged. him back, failing that. But some other instinct says she was right to come alone. This moment still has too much fragility to it, enough that she’s afraid bringing anyone else in will shatter it entirely.

 

“Perhaps I have.”

 

She stares into the fire. “You haven't asked who I am. But you seem to know me, anyway.”

 

“I suppose I though I didn’t really need to. I’m sorry. I haven’t had a lot of conversation, lately. Fine, then. Your name will do. I know enough otherwise.”

 

“I'm Rey. And what else do you know?”

 

“Rey, then. Well. I think… A parentless child, who lived in the sand and dreamed of somewhere else, who didn’t want to leave, not really, but also dreamed to anyway. Because you wanted to fly. Needed that. And when you had to leave, you found a whole lot more than just that. A weapon that fit your hand better than it should, by rights. A ship called the Millennium Falcon. A mentor, one you lost too soon. Unexpected friends. A different purpose. Power, of the kind you never knew you had within you, yet was somehow always there.”

 

“Yes.” She says, for all of that is true enough, almost startlingly so. and wonders how he knew.

 

“It's a familiar story.” He sets his bowl aside.

 

“How familiar?”

 

“It was mine, once, after a fashion.” He admits, weathered face half lit by the fire, half by the light streaming in through the doorway.

 

“Is that why this called to me?”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

His eyes are on the lightsaber, old memories almost as clear in them as they had been when she'd seen then first, on Takodana. “Tell me this, then. If you didn’t ask for it… What _did_ you ask for, instead? In those quiet moments, when you felt hopeless, or afraid. Everyone asks for something.”

 

It takes a while to come to her. “Answers. Freedom. For a clear path back, or maybe forwards. For family."

 

"Did you find any of them?"

 

"Not answers. Or family. Or… Not the same ones I thought I was looking for. Unless..."

 

She hesitates. "Unless I just found it."

 

"That depends."

 

"On what?"

 

"On what the question was, I suppose."

 

A possibility occurs to her. Something that would explain things, more than just a familiar story. “Am I your child? Am I…” Her voice is more tremulous than she wants it to be. “Am I yours?”

 

He seems bemused by the question, at first, before he sobers. His answer is gentle, at least, though she isn’t sure if that’s a mercy.

 

“No. I’m sorry. I'm not. Though, for what it may be worth… Knowing isn’t always easier.”

 

So that's that. Whatever fathers, mothers, or parents she had who might yet live, she wouldn't find them here. But they weren't on Jakku, either, and Maz's voice rings in her head, about what lies ahead of her, not behind.

"So, what now, then?" 

"I spent so much time being no one, so much time being tethered, and now I'm not. I feel like I'm... on the cusp of something. That I could flee, or fall, or fly, and I'm trying to find out which it is."

 

“Which do you want it to be?”

 

She remembers that moment, on Starkiller, the chasm below, darkness above. When she was about to fall, when she’d let go of the doubt, the need in her to _not_ let herself feel it. When the Force was in her, truly, for the very first time, and she had felt the leaves in the trees, the solar wind, the pain of her friend behind her and every other life, and it had been… Awe, glory, empathy, joy, _purpose_ , shining in her veins as if they were liquid in her heart and in her soul.

 

The moment of flying the Falcon, not just a simulation, but the real thing. Of the space between the stars as she saw them, unfiltered by atmosphere.

 

Of all the moments she chose. When she thought to stay. When she’d seen that little droid in the sand, lost and hurting, and it had tugged her forwards.

 

But she thinks too, of when she ran. When she had wavered. That other moment, the terrible one. Before the crack in the earth had made that decision for her, when she had wanted so badly to kill. To make him bleed, make him _hurt_ , because he had wrought so much pain that it seemed right that a little of it come back onto him.

 

It was a fraction of moment in the midst of the ugly victory. When she hadnt even known who she was, when the power in her felt like poison as much as fire, righteous fury that could smother everything in its path.

 

Part of her wants to keep screaming, to run back down those thousand steps and never come back. To say again, she didn’t _ask_ for this. She didn’t want any part of this. It’s bigger than her, bigger than she can possibly hope to contain, and she’s so afraid of failing, of letting that hint of darkness she’d felt once consume her. That she could become like _him._

 

Then she lets go of that. Of wanting.

 

And instead, she thinks of Finn, taking up the lightsaber, despite his own fear. Of how every power in the world had tried to turn him against the light, against life and kindness, of how he’d meant to run, but he hadn’t. He’d come back for her, like she'd always yearned for family to do. 

 

Of Han, trusting in her capability. Believing in things despite his doubts, because he had proof. How he'd gotten lost on promises he couldnt keep, trying to hold fast to forsaken things & lost causes & only finding the right ones halfway too late.

 

Of Chewie. Steadfast, sarcastic, fierce in everything, and so quietly kind in grief. Who listened and flew with her, even as he wanted to tear a whole moon apart in grief.

 

Poe, who hadnt paused one moment for glory in his victory, had been out of his X-wing and hit the ground running. How he'd followed Finn's stretcher. Or later, with tired but gentle eyes, who'd told her he’d watch after Finn, to be there when he awoke, so he wouldn’t feel alone.

 

That pilot with the beautiful face, that kind voice and dark hair, who’d wished her luck even though she was a stranger. Asked her if it was true, that Rey was going to find him, awe in her eyes

 

Maz, who’d seen something in her eyes to believe in, seen so many things, the weight of thousands of years. But still fought, still safeguarded..

 

BB-8, fierce and small and brave.

 

The moment when Leia had looked at her, with trust and respect, and wished for the Force to be with her. And Rey had felt the weight of that, the strength of her, the good in it that she fed into the very air, leadership that came from knowing the fight was never over for her, but it might be for some, if she could fight for that. Hold fast against the storms.

 

When Rey had been sent off, and she’d looked in the faces of everyone there, and seen… Had seen….

 

_Oh._

 

She’d seen hope. _Hope._ Because of her. Because of what she could do. Whatever she saw in others, they saw as much in her, or more. 

 

So that was that, then.

 

Her answer.

 

“I think… I think you said it yourself. 

 

I need to _fly_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dubiousculturalartifact on tumblr, @DubiousCA on twitter, and I also absolutely adore comments, if you feel like that.


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